In today's world of communications, technologies are evolving at a much faster pace, consumers are becoming demanding and there is a strong need for reducing the time-to-market. Along with the quick evolution of technologies, the need of the hour is co-existence of these technologies with better functionality, where test and measurement (T&M) companies play a very crucial role in this dynamic scenario. T&M assures the efficacy of a technology and it vividly defines a roadmap of technologies with an emphasis on the future readiness. After discovering/inventing a technology in any and every segment it is equally important to evaluate its performance before its deployment. As the telecommunications sector ascends the impressive growth curve alongside the emergence of umpteen technologies, T&M is gaining more and more prominence. There is a tremendous demand for conformance and interoperability testing between hands.
Growing Manifold
T&M is growing manifold to date because of the constantly rising subscriber base, higher penetration of technology particularly wireless technologies-LTE, WiMax, BWA, need for QoS, and emphasis on the local manufacturing. Speaking about the T&M dynamics, Shankar Krishnamurthy, country manager, Empirix India and Sri Lanka/Maldives, says, “From a technical perspective, T&M solutions must evolve to support new network protocols and service delivery methods within a single architecture. Operators who can effectively troubleshoot issues can tightly control costs. Those that can assure a great customer experience will build loyalty.” From a business perspective, operators need greater insight into customer behaviors and application usage to make smarter decisions on infrastructure investments, pricing models, marketing campaigns, and revenue generation programs. M Mombasawala, general manager, applications, Agilent Technologies says, “T&M is imperative in providing validation in all areas of telecom, be it R&D activities from companies like Qualcomm or service provider provisioning from Ericsson or consumption from operators.”
Wireless Technologies
Introduction of third generation technologies, proposed launch of fourth generation technologies like LTE, WiMax, broadband wireless access service; and, with the next-generation technologies, telecom T&M is likely to witness strong demand in the coming years. Large scale deployments of communication technologies need large-scale emulation. In India, we predominantly have 2G networks and 3G networks are overlaid on 2G network and ensuring interoperability and inter-working of this network is of paramount importance. The ability to seamlessly hand over between cells while minimizing the interruption to data throughput needs to be tested and assured as does the ability to hand over between different radio access technologies while maintaining the data connection.
T&M plays a crucial role in 3G services, in all aspects of 3G handset and field testing, including core/access network testing. T&M opportunities are increased with the beginning of 3G BTS manufacturing by network equipment manufacturers and 3G handset manufacturing. 3G handset testing and mobile application testing would fall into the testing menu of the SPs. Radio frequency measurements for spectrum clearance, coverage, and interference are a must do to ensure better 3G services. “The adoption of 3G and BWA offer tremendous opportunity. As they add new technologies, operators must include a plan for assuring them. However forward-thinking operators are taking a more strategic approach. Rather than simply installing a new probe to analyze the latest 3G protocol, these operators are choosing a holistic end-to-end T&M solution with predictive capabilities that preempt issues from impacting customers. This assures a better customer experience with significantly reducing the overall cost of troubleshooting and maintaining the network as a whole,” points out Shankar Krishnamurthy, country manager, Empirix India, Sri Lanka/Maldives.
A comprehensive test of radio frequency, protocol and system level elements such as base stations, cell sites, handsets and network infrastructure in a 4G network is a major requirement for its operational efficiency. M Mombasawala, general manager, applications, Agilent Technologies mentions, “A transition to 4G/ LTE greatly increases the complexity of the task of monitoring and troubleshooting mobile data services. Service providers need to develop, deploy and manage the technology in a way that ensures a high QoS while minimizing capex and opex. The latest generation of T&M equipments help to evaluate and deploy equipment that meets specifications and quality standards, verifies new services, and accelerates problem resolution cycle time.” Carriers that get T&M would have many loyal customers on their network for long term. Both fixed and mobile WiMax, a 4G technology, have a very complex requirement in terms of characterization. Conducting a basic RF transmitter measurement on WiMax requires high performance test equipment with advanced measurement functionality. Hence ensuring operational readiness of 4G networks is essential not only during the initial launch of technology but also as network and services grow and mature.
Apart from technologies, there is a dire need to test applications as well. The mobile applications will have to be tested for robustness under bad RF conditions, so as to provide a great end user experience. Besides, enterprise offerings such as cloud computing and virtualizations is also driving T&M. Referring to the T&M requirements Shankar Krishnamurthy says, “End-to-end visibility, regardless of network protocol or service delivery method, is the most important requirement for T&M today. If an operator cannot see the entire communication from start to finish, they cannot understand customer experience, Quality of Service or application performance. If an operator cannot see their entire operations, they cannot assure interoperability, cost-effectively troubleshoot issues or effectively integrate new technologies to optimize the network.”
Increasing Subscriber Numbers
The functionality of T&M tools have been accelerated due to the increasing number of wireless subscribers, increasing number of mobile devices particularly smartphones, a transition from voice to data services including mobile banking, mobile social networking applications, etc.
Service providers ought to ensure better quality of service and experience hence the need to testing has increased. In order to meet the customer expectations, SPs should ensure high quality of network performance thus channel coding, BER, latency, and throughput rates under varying conditions including fading and mobility must be tested.
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